Amazon Software Development Engineering reviews

3.5

57% would recommend to a friend

(6,788 total reviews)
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Andrew Jassy

40% approve of CEO

54% positive business outlook

Software Development Engineering employees have rated Amazon with 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 6,788 company reviews on Glassdoor. This indicates that most Software Development Engineering professionals have a good working experience there. Amazon is rated in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) by Software Development Engineering professionals compared to other employers within the IT (Information Technology) industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

7K reviews
1.0
Mar 1, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Projects are interesting. You can get technical challenge with fellow software engineers. There're lots of smart people, here.

Cons

Work environment is not great. In the beginning, A shared desk was assigned to me without cube. A small war-room kind of office with 7 software engineers and there's no privacy while others kept complaining about smell of my coffee. I've never been in this kind of atmosphere. It might only be my team but quite discouraged to be creative. The benefit was even worse. In normal company, HMO is the cheapest plan but Amazon offers the most expensive HMO option and there's wierd plan of health fund. Health fund is okay for who doesn't go to see doctor more than 7 times per year but totally out of sense when you had family. Premium was already high but out of pocket cost for hospital is another story. 401k matching is very low and the company tries to get employee's patent idea for free while my previous company always paid for it. Parking reimbursement wasn't enough to drive your car to downtown. There's no ESPP. And so on.. There's no formal training except new hire orientation which took only half day. No education support. It seems like this company only want to use your knowledge and has no interest to develop it. On call duty is also painful. You need to carry the pager and it might beep in the midnight and must respond it within 15 min or it'll be escalated to your manager, director, vp, ...

4.0
Feb 25, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Amazon is a great place to learn from smart people, particularly at our remote development site. There's a lot of opportunity for motivated engineers to learn a lot about all aspects of software development and make a direct difference to the business.

Cons

Opportunities for promotion or different work are limited at our remote development site. And dealing with people in other sites is a common source of stress.

2.0
Feb 24, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You're CTC might appear as a good number (read the offer doc carefully, even the employer PF goes from your CTC) Number of stocks (mostly you'll get it after 3 years - depends upon the employee) Lot of technical challenges (which is good for learning) Employees don't speak English, they'll speak in some programming languages :)

Cons

As someone mentioned, Employees are "Resources". Management will look at you as a "price tag". Facilities are too frugal and I feel most of the employees became "miser" after joining here. They'll say its "Cheap and Best" but most of the time its just "Cheaper". You've to ask for everything (even simple stationaries) and fight for hike. No free transport (around 4k per month in India). Never expect work-life balance (might have seen this in other reviews). Can't do any higher studies in correspondence even with your own money (due to some stupid policy). And at last, never expect any perks (apart from tea/coffee and employee medical insurance). This company will change the way, you look at the money you may miss the other part of your life after joining! Why I'm still here? Just to get a brand name in my resume!

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